Creo & Windchill to Onshape

BeeDubs

The company I work for currently uses PTC Creo and Windchill.  We are a global team of engineers and other job roles sharing the Windchill space.  Managing the Windchill system from a training level and managing the CAD system has become more and more difficult as more users join the team.  I've had a free account since before PTC acquired Onshape and I've been following the development closely.  I've been discussing with upper management the many pros of moving our team to Onshape, I even had an in-house demo done to show management and other engineers some of the cool CAD, data management, and sharing tools. Everyone thinks the Onshape package is great and would be excited to use it.  The Creo/Windchill system seems so cumbersome when comparing the two and on a global level it just makes sense. Not having to manage installs or making sure everyone has the same settings/configs, etc. there are dozens or more reasons why I would love to step away from Windchill.

After the demo, we started talking about the data transfer from Windchill/Creo into the Onshape system. I knew that this would be the biggest hurdle for upper management to get over, but, after hearing that basically, every CAD file would come in as a DXF and/or STEP file, my manager more or less cut it off there. It's a huge disappointment that even though PTC is the owner of both products, they've still made it very difficult and a hard pill to swallow for us to move from one product to another.

Are there any plans for PTC to make moving from one PTC product to another a bit more friendly? Obviously getting new users/companies to switch to Onshape is a strong business, but what about us PTC users that are holding onto a lot of legacy data that just want to move forward into the new/better systems that are coming along?

bryan_lagrange

Maybe contact Cassini and see if they have something in the works. They just made a solidworks migration tool. 

https://www.getcassini.com/

BeeDubs

bryan_lagrange said:

Maybe contact Cassini and see if they have something in the works. They just made a solidworks migration tool. 

https://www.getcassini.com/

Do you mean they've come up with a migration tool that allows the transfer of native SW files that can be opened in OS?

bryan_lagrange

Yes

bryan_lagrange

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/onshape_cad-onshape-ugcPost-6852211005724876800-W0XF

brucebartlett

I am assuming you want to keep the Creo feature trees. If so, I think you'll find it's near on impossible to transfer consistently between any MCAD and maintain the original intent in a usable fashion. Also the same for the drawing side. 

nick_papageorge073

I don't think what you are asking for is possible when switching between any CAD systems. Your best bet might be to keep a lower seat count of Creo and Windchill for accessing old projects. Then start all new projects on the new CAD system of your choice.

My prior company did this in 2002 switching from a decade of SDRC Ideas, to ProE. Ideas had merged at the time with Unigraphics, and was going away. They kept several unix boxes in tip top condition to access the original old data for many years. All the new projects went to ProE and Intralink (no Windchill at that time yet). Then in I think 2010 they paid a company to convert all the old Ideas files into STEP, and add them to the Windchill database. I just asked my former colleague a few weeks ago if they still had any Unix boxes with Ideas running. He didn't know.

konstantin_shiriazdanov

In addition to what @nick_papageorge073 said. When you considering this kind of global changes like moving of your development stack/infrastructure you likely already have a good amount of reasons to do so and having legacy documentation shouldn't threaten you because in the end it is a fair deal - you exchanging a lot of old problems for a few of new ones. The best migration strategy is to only recreate legacy documents in new system when they are in the beginning of their life cycle. For a more mature documents you would expect a low frequency or minor changes and having a few licenses of old cad should be enough to maintain it. Onshape nicely supports the update of imported BREP files.

bryan_lagrange

Solid Edge has a nice migration tool: 

https://www.prolim.com/solid-edge-using-the-solidworks-data-migration-tool/

There is one for Creo Elements Direct, Pro-E, SolidWorks, and Inventor

I would like to see something like this for Onshape:

BeeDubs

Bryan, I've seen this demo video. The problem is that management has concerns with situations where legacy data would need to be manipulated. His example was, 'what if we have to make a small diameter change to a component? Now we have to spend engineering time on a redraw.'  This transfer software, although robust and probably extremely helpful, does not bring the data over in its native format. It comes over as a step file for CAD and DXF for drawings.  This means the feature list(s) are gone. You can use flexible modeling to modify, but, you can't really work parametrically, and on top of that, the drawings would basically need to be redone if there were mods to the components.

My original concern/question is why PTC doesn't make it so PTC-designed assemblies, parts, and drawings aren't more usable in their new software, ie, maintaining the feature tree.

bryan_lagrange

I would guess one of the hurdles might be different modeling kernels Onshape uses parisolid vs Creo uses Granite. 

nick_papageorge073

BeeDubs said:

Bryan, I've seen this demo video. The problem is that management has concerns with situations where legacy data would need to be manipulated. His example was, 'what if we have to make a small diameter change to a component? Now we have to spend engineering time on a redraw.'  This transfer software, although robust and probably extremely helpful, does not bring the data over in its native format. It comes over as a step file for CAD and DXF for drawings.  This means the feature list(s) are gone. You can use flexible modeling to modify, but, you can't really work parametrically, and on top of that, the drawings would basically need to be redone if there were mods to the components.

My original concern/question is why PTC doesn't make it so PTC-designed assemblies, parts, and drawings aren't more usable in their new software, ie, maintaining the feature tree.

PTC charges 2-3 times a seat of Creo as they do OS. They don't want people switching. Plus almost every company that has more than a handful of Creo seats also pays for Windchill. Lots of money in that.

Back you your question though, really the only way is to keep both softwares and just fewer licenses as the old one phases out. My last job we had 100's of seats of Creo, which was the main CAD, plus 20 legacy seats of IDEAS still from the 90's, plus dozens of auto cad, dozens of Solidworks, etc. That's just the way the CAD world works.

billy2

@BeeDubs

I think the future is the cloud and all CAD will to move there. OS is currently the only one. There will be no desktop CAD eventually.

I pulled all my SW models into OS. I don't think a translator would have pulled anything meaningful over to OS. Most larger projects are a mess in there native CAD and how can you expect a translator to get it right?

I would & did go into my old CAD and define datums so they would transfer into OS. The assembly structures I found are better inside OS so I recreate them in OS. I believe the new OS assembly import will build instantiation (1 bolt with 500 instances vs. 500 unique bolts) which is really good. None of the translators handle instantiation well, at least OS tries. It's sad that no translator moves properties from one CAD to another. I just don't think any translator will ever work right.

It wasn't that big of a deal for me to move from SW to OS. In fact it's exciting because the project structures in OS are so much more powerful than any other CAD you won't want that old stuff inside OS.

I'd learn OS and start the transition, you'll be glad you did.

Joaquin_Ramirez_17

billy2 said:

@BeeDubs

I think the future is the cloud and all CAD will to move there. OS is currently the only one. There will be no desktop CAD eventually.

I pulled all my SW models into OS. I don't think a translator would have pulled anything meaningful over to OS. Most larger projects are a mess in there native CAD and how can you expect a translator to get it right?

I would & did go into my old CAD and define datums so they would transfer into OS. The assembly structures I found are better inside OS so I recreate them in OS. I believe the new OS assembly import will build instantiation (1 bolt with 500 instances vs. 500 unique bolts) which is really good. None of the translators handle instantiation well, at least OS tries. It's sad that no translator moves properties from one CAD to another. I just don't think any translator will ever work right.

It wasn't that big of a deal for me to move from SW to OS. In fact it's exciting because the project structures in OS are so much more powerful than any other CAD you won't want that old stuff inside OS.

I'd learn OS and start the transition, you'll be glad you did.

Hey Billy this is good to know! We are currently starting a migration from SW to OS. Will definitely reach out with some questions and best practices!